U.S. Military’s Plan of ’Lily Pad’ Deployment Taking Shape in Kyrgyzstan

By MICHAEL MAINVILLE Special to the Sun

MANAS AIR FIELD, Kyrgyzstan - U.S. Air Force Captain
Dale Linafelter was dumbfounded when he first found
out he was being deployed to the Manas air base in the
former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

"I’d never even heard of Kyrgyzstan," said Captain
Linafelter, the flight safety investigator at the
base, which hosts the largest number of American
forces in Central Asia outside Afghanistan.

He wasn’t alone. Very few of the more than 1,150
American servicemen at Manas, a dusty, long-abandoned
Soviet bomber base, could have found Kyrgyzstan on a
map before they arrived here, said the base chaplain,
Lieutenant Colonel Stan Giles.

"Some of them still don’t know where they are,"
Colonel Giles joked. "You know, there’s an old saying:
War is God’s way of teaching geography to Americans."

Yet it is in places like Kyrgyzstan - a mountainous
Muslim country bordering Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, and China - that the future of the
American military is taking shape.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and combat in
Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon is planning the
greatest shake-up in America’s overseas military
deployment since the end of World War II. While the
full details of the plan will be disclosed only later
this year, one thing is already clear: the days of the
massive "small-town USA" bases in places like Germany,
Japan, and South Korea are over. Replacing them will
be a global network of what Pentagon planners have
dubbed "lily pads" - small forward bases in more
remote and dangerous corners of the world that can act
as jumping-off points when crises arise.

"This marks a new epoch in American force posturing,"
said the director of a Washington clearinghouse for
strategic intelligence, globalsecurity.org, John Pike.
"It’s one of only a half dozen similar reposturings
since the American Revolution. It’s a very significant
change."

The deputy assistant secretary of defense for
strategy, Andy Hoehn, said in Washington that defense
officials will be presenting their redeployment pro
posals to President Bush within weeks. Mr. Hoehn said
he expects the changes to start taking effect in late
2005 or early 2006.

The strategy, experts say, is to position American
forces throughout a so-called arc of instability that
runs through the Caribbean, Africa, the Caucasus,
Central Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia. It is
in these parts of the world - generally poor, insular,
and unstable - that military planners now see threats
to American interests.

The Pentagon believes that spreading American forces
through a large number of small, flexible bases within
this arc would better position the military to strike
faster at remote hotspots. The American military
presence in these areas could also act as a
stabilizing factor, preventing them from becoming
hotspots in the first place.

"We don’t know exactly where the next threat will be.
It could be Iran, North Korea, China, or other parts
of the world. This redeployment is designed to allow
us to quickly respond to any of those challenges," Mr.
Pike said.

The American military presence in Kyrgyzstan provides
a glimpse of what’s to come.

Unlike the big garrison bases that have traditionally
housed more than 80% of American forces overseas, the
Manas air base is small, simple, and largely isolated
from the surrounding community. There are no families,
schools, fast-food chains, or department stores.
Contact with local villagers and access to the nearby
capital, Bishkek, is strictly limited. Postings here
rarely last longer than three or four months and
accommodations consist of eight-man tents.

Initially set up as a temporary staging ground for
incursions into neighboring Afghanistan, today the
base serves primarily as a strategic airlift hub and
launching area for air refueling missions - exactly
the kind of "lily pad" Pentagon planners are
envisaging.

About 10 flights a day depart from Manas, either C-130
Hercules planes ferrying troops and supplies to bases
in Afghanistan or KC-135 Stratotankers refueling
American planes over Afghan airspace.

American bases abroad cannot be named after
individuals, but unofficially this facility is known
as the Peter J. Ganci base, after a New York fire
chief killed when the World Trade Center collapsed.

Whether the base is having the kind of stabilizing
effect military planners are hoping for still isn’t
clear.

Kyrygz officials credit the presence of American
forces with helping deter attacks from Islamic
fundamentalists based in the Ferghana Valley, which
straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

One terrorist group, the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, which is believed to be responsible for a
string of attacks that left 47 people dead in
Uzbekistan in April, launched incursions into
Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000 that the military repelled
only after taking heavy casualties.

"There haven’t been any incursions since we got here,"
said the Manas base’s public-affairs officer, Captain
Jason Decker. "It’s not why we’re here, but we’re
happy to make it a more stable world."

Still, radical Islamic groups have condemned the
Kyrgyz government for cooperating with the Americans,
and in April four men were jailed for plotting to blow
up the base. Captain Decker says two other terrorist
attacks on the base were averted in the last year.
Earlier this month, the Kyrgyz government also
arrested six people, including four government
employees, for allegedly spying for Islamic terrorists
abroad.

The presence of American forces has also increased
tensions between Central Asian countries and former
imperial master Russia. Seriously concerned about the
presence of American troops in its backyard, Moscow
has been pressuring Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and
Tajikistan - all of which host American forces - to
ask them to leave. Last year, the Kremlin convinced
the Kyrgyz government to allow the Russian Air Force
to set up its own base less than 70 miles from Manas.
The Kant base marked the first foreign deployment of
Russian forces abroad since the collapse of the Soviet
Union. It is home to Su-27 fighter planes, Su-25
ground-attack aircraft, and Mi-8 helicopters, which
conduct training exercises in Kyrgyz airspace. Captain
Decker said there have been no contacts between the
American and Russian forces.

For ordinary Kyrgyz, the presence of the American base
is less of a political issue than an economic one,
said a senior Western official who has spent the last
seven years living in Bishkek.

In poverty-stricken Kyrgyzstan, the presence of even a
relatively small number of American troops can have an
enormous impact. The base employs more than 500
locals, paying them up to 10 times the average monthly
wage of about $100. The base is pumping about $156,000
a day into the local economy and last year accounted
for 5% of Kyrgyzstan’s entire gross domestic product.

"The general attitude among people here is that
they’ll take it for what it’s worth," the Western
official said. "The advent of the American base has
actually helped to create something of a middle class
in Bishkek."

And there are no signs that American forces will be
abandoning Manas any time soon. In fact, the Air Force
is spending $60 million this year to replace the base
tents with more permanent buildings constructed from
shipping containers.

"This is not any kind of indication of moving to a
permanent base," Captain Decker insisted. "On the
other hand, we’re not leaving tomorrow. Our mission is
going on until the global war on terrorism is done,
until the Kyrgyz government doesn’t want us here or
until America decides to send us home."

The New York Sun